


Foolish enough to love one place

by gogollescent



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to Chapter 50.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foolish enough to love one place

She dreamt of Historia. Historia, coming for her with swords outthrust and shining; Historia’s glance like the mouth of a musket, dark though ringed by bluish steel. In the dream all the chaos of that night outside Wall Rose was multiplied and stirred to a violent soup: no humans, titans, screaming horses _—_ no fractal moon-chipped trees—just them. Alone. Plus the noisy abstractions of her remembered terror, as meaningless as the moment of transformation, or an upset flock of birds. Beating up through blackened air to make a cage of flesh.

"I’m sorry," she told Historia. "I have to save them. Who else would bother?" Historia, crouched and solemn on the tip of her nose, minute fingers pressed like the points of a crown into the curve of Ymir’s eye socket, said nothing. She kissed the area of bone closest to her lips, and began to climb up Ymir’s stinging face, past the point where Ymir could see her legs, her fingertip-soft heels. Ymir felt her stand, briefly, at the top of the Titan’s bald head; felt the shifting of weight from a crouch to an upright, courageous run. And then she was a clotted mass in Ymir’s hair, sinking, sliding—

"I have the greater need," said Historia, very close by Ymir’s ear: her real ear, small, submerged, pierced by nerves like jewelry. And saying it she cut apart the nape.

…

"Ymir. Ymir!"

"Go ‘way," said Ymir, rolling over, and came within a hand’s-breadth of leaving Maria unassisted. Bertholdt grabbed her arm, let go almost as quickly, and stared down at her as though looking at a stranger.

"We should head down," he said, his face grim in the yellow wash of dawn. "Before the Titans are really up and moving."

"Yeah, whatever."

There was a little silence. She sat up, feeling as though all the limbs she’d ever lost were gathered and hanging off her back. 

"What?"

"You were smiling," he said.

"Dreamed you died," she said, and smiled again to take the edge off, or to put one in. Bertholdt nodded. He wheeled around to shake Reiner awake. Ymir, left alone for one more moment, went to look down from the edge. She let one foot dangle over, and rested her chin on the raised knee.

_I made my choice_ , she told herself, thinking of Bertholdt’s scream. She just wished she hadn't had one. _Right. Because that's so different_. But—

Historia, excising her like a tumor. Historia, taking her home.

A dream.

Ymir looked reflexively at her wrists and ankles: the places Historia would have had to slice through, to get her out of herself. After a full night’s rest atop the Wall, of course, there was no sign anything had been lost.


End file.
